does anyone know what headphones those are?
The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
121–130 of 213 posts
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#122The tall thin heatsink at the edge of the motherboard is cooling part of the VRM. The VRM or Voltage Regulator Module is responsible for converting the 12V input down to 1.3V or so for the CPU. Under that heatsink there are 2 of the 8 phases for CPU Vcore and 2 phases for Vsoc. It would be pretty safe to remove that heatsink, even in a passive case because: - Vsoc draws very little power, especially with no iGPU. - T…
Yup, most MOSFETs will have no trouble running at 125C! The power supplies in some of our products occasionally run at 180C, without heat-sinking. But these aren't designed to last as long as a motherboard VRM.
In general cooler is better. At high temps you'll see temperature related aging accelerate (e.g. solder, PCB substrate, electromigration in the parts), but you'd probably be okay. The PC would become obsolete way before the VRM fails. The worst case I can imagine is the MOSFETs and inductors heat up, bringing the local temperature up to a point where the controller IC enters over-temperature shutdown, but it's unlikely.
Personally, if the current heatsink is too big I would just find smaller ones and attach them. I don't really have a good reason, I just like parts running cool :)
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern cables (if you buy high quality ones) support incredible lengths - this is relatively easy to do in many situations.
Except, of course, for Thunderbolt 3, where to get even reasonable lengths you have to pay $$$. https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/27/21339861/apple-thunderbol...
What's the deal with these prices? Is it just because the connector is so compact? A 2-meter QSFP+ 40-gigabit copper cable is only about $25.
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Thunderbolt in this case is coming from the chipset on the motherboard, not the CPU. He lists the motherboard as an X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 which supports 2nd gen Ryzen, and which has that support built in.
Does this explain the author’s surprise that apple’s fanless MacBooks can handle thunderbolt 3 without getting hot? If they’re doing it on cpu then I suppose that could bring about a lot of cpu i/o efficiency.
With the exception of Intel's ice lake CPUs (10th gen Core), everyone does thunderbolt on a discrete controller (in the case of this ASRock board it's a Titan Ridge controller). The x570 chipset runs very hot and is actively cooled regardless of the presence of an off-die thunderbolt controller hooked up to some of it's PCI-express lanes.
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#125Thunderbolt 3 really is amazing. Im using a OWC Thunderbolt Dock to connect my MacBook to: an eGPU thats driving a 5K monitor, a 1TB TB3 SSD, and 24/96 USB audio to my stereo. All over one cable. BTW if your using TB3 as your main connection to your laptop I highly recommend a magnetic TB3 adapter. This has been working great in my setup for over a year and makes docking/undocking a snap. https://www.amazon.com/Magne…
Offtopic: if you plug in a pair of Apple ear/headphones into the headphone jack on the OWC, can you control the volume via the built in controls on the cable of the headphones, like you can when connected to the Macbook?
Yes you can. Also if you want even more control over multiple audio outputs including individual control by application check out the App SoundSource by RogueAmoeba for Mac.
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ryzen 5 2600 is the cpu listed on the original spec sheet. I don’t think it supports thunderbolt though.
The Thunderbolt in this case is coming from the chipset on the motherboard, not the CPU. He lists the motherboard as an X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 which supports 2nd gen Ryzen, and which has that support built in.
This is incorrect, no AMD chip (CPU or chipset) comes with thunderbolt built in. The x570 Phantom Gaming board uses an Intel Titan Ridge (see the obligatory AnandTech block diagram) controller hanging off of the chipset's PCIe lanes to provide thunderbolt 3. This is functionally equivalent to just buying a thunderbolt add-in card, other than the space requirements.
https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14880/ASRock%20X570%20Phan...
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#127Thunderbolt 3 really is amazing. Im using a OWC Thunderbolt Dock to connect my MacBook to: an eGPU thats driving a 5K monitor, a 1TB TB3 SSD, and 24/96 USB audio to my stereo. All over one cable. BTW if your using TB3 as your main connection to your laptop I highly recommend a magnetic TB3 adapter. This has been working great in my setup for over a year and makes docking/undocking a snap. https://www.amazon.com/Magne…
Amazing, like MagSafe again. I'm thinking that may be the way forward to avoid a KVM. With TB — can you literally just unplug from one Laptop/PC and connect to another and everything is back up and running on the 2nd computer?
I do this between my Thinkpad (work) and XPS (personal) laptops. Takes only a few seconds to unplug the cable from from one, and plug in the other, with all peripherals working. IOW, there's no Apple magic here, standards are pretty cool.
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#128does anyone know what headphones those are?
Sennheiser momentums. They sound great, and the fit is good if you have a tiny head and tiny ears. Otherwise you'll be swapping out the pads or not wearing them for more than a few hours.
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except, of course, for Thunderbolt 3, where to get even reasonable lengths you have to pay $$$. https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/27/21339861/apple-thunderbol...
What's the deal with these prices? Is it just because the connector is so compact? A 2-meter QSFP+ 40-gigabit copper cable is only about $25. https://www.fs.com/c/40g-qsfp-dac-1117
They are "active" cables and so have microcontrollers in them.
Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC
#130does anyone know what headphones those are?
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